Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
RAE
We’re kissing like we’re drowning all over again, breathing in each other’s air, hands moving over each other’s body as if trying to map a new way home.
Clothes, too many clothes, stiff with blood and salt, still wet in places and sticking to our skin. We’re reluctant to break the kiss to undress properly.
I can feel his reluctance.
I bet he can feel mine.
Just as he can feel my arousal, and I can feel his, both in my mind and in the hard length trapped between our bodies, in the urgency of his kiss and the way he’s gripping me, in the growl deep in his throat when I bury my fingers in his soft hair and tug.
Even bowed over me like this, he’s so much taller than me, I have to rise on tiptoe to thread my fingers in those dark locks.
His arms slide around me, around my lower back, and as that seemingly endless kiss finally ceases, breaking like a seal on a secret kept locked for so long, he lifts me up against him, swings me up in his arms, and spins me around.
Dazzling, I think, my eyes half-closing. It’s as if I’m spun across the night sky with all the stars and clouds and nightbirds, with all the wings and feathers and gold. Fairytales and songs. Magic and storm.
“Rae…” He carries me to the bed, but then he staggers, and I remember his hurt leg, reality smacking into me like a blow.
“Put me down,” I whisper, and after a beat, he unhooks his arm from underneath my knees and places my feet on the floor.
He’s smiling as we stand facing each other, as his hands slide around my waist. Smiling and dimpling, and his eyes…
those dark eyes are so full of light right now, they cast shadows on everything in this room, including me.
They are like suns, silver and gray and blue, the black receding for a moment.
Such a neat trick. An illusion.
But the joy in them turns back to hunger and desire, and the darkness returns. It’s a dark so deep and soft, it’s velvet and satin, and it smolders like embers.
It’s hard to remember that nothing has been resolved between us, that before the kiss, he was about to walk out and I was going to climb into the bathtub and ruminate over this mess between us.
This is desire, I remind myself. Sexual, physical. Lust, and nothing more.
Like scratching an itch or stretching a muscle.
That’s how I should see it, but then his hands slip up my body, over my ribs, over my breasts, and he lets out a low groan as if I’m hurting him, as if he’s in pain, and it’s so sexy.
I’m the one in pain from wanting him so badly. The throb between my legs is like a wound, throbbing angrily, needing relief.
His hands slide up my neck, slip into my wet hair, and he’s kissing me again, his mouth desperate.
Is it gentler this time? No. It’s deeper, his tongue battling with mine, his fingers digging against my scalp, his breathing chopped and labored.
I step back, and he follows, until we fall onto the bed. My breath leaves me, and he swallows it, settling over me, our mouths still fused together. One of his hands pushes up the wet skirt of my dress, caressing my leg.
He shoves a muscular thigh between my legs and I cry out against his lips as he presses against the softest part of me, the part that’s aching for him.
“Rae,” he breathes, ripping my wet neckline down, and lowers his head to my breasts.
All thought flees as he drags my dress down and puts his mouth on my aching nipple. Stars explode inside my head. My body arches up. I never thought it could feel this good to have a man’s mouth on the tips of my breasts.
There’s so much I never knew.
He’s sucking on it, then his tongue, rough like a cat’s, starts licking the tip and I cry out, shaking, as pleasure rushes through me.
The world fades away for precious moments.
“Rae,” he rumbles. “Are you all right?”
All right? I’d laugh but I have no air left. That hardly covers the way I’m feeling right now.
I reach for him. “I want you.”
“Tell me what you need,” he breathes, his dark eyes full of stars, bowing over me again, smiling. “Tell me, makhair, I want to hear it, hear how you want me.”
“Command me,” he’d said. Phaethon had said it, too. He wants to know what I want. He cares. He wants me to tell him what I need, to take control and express my desire.
He lets me rule him in the bedroom and instead of making him weak, it makes him stronger.
How is he doing this, making me like him more and more when I know we can’t be together? Twining himself around my heart like a vine, but instead of strangling it, he’s cradling it, protecting it, making it his?
I cup his face in my hands and seek his mouth again, seeking his taste, his shape, to reassure myself that this is about physical release, about pleasure. I don’t want him talking to me, endearing himself to me more.
So I slide my hand down the front of his pants. A distraction is necessary—only it works on both of us.
His gasp turns into a low growl when I palm the hard length of his cock through his black pants—because yes, he’s still in his clothes from the trial, one pant leg cut off, still filthy and bloody, wet and pale, but neither of us care. I’m just as filthy, just as wet.
And yes, I mean it both ways. Touching his aroused cock affects me more than I’d ever imagined. It’s so sexy, feeling how hard he is for me.
He grunts when I pull back and start to unlace the front of his pants. I chance a glance up to take in his downturned face, the black hair falling in his eyes, the parted lips, that powerful physique, and my mouth goes dry.
He’s so… male. So strong and tall, hulking over me. I don’t know why it makes my body go tight again and restarts the throb between my legs. He’s the kind of man who turns me on, though I’ve never felt any such attraction for any other warrior.
Not even with the fae king, no matter how handsome he is. No matter if he’s Mars.
Jai is the one man who turns me on, and the thought sounds right.
It also sounds risky. Dangerous. Crazy.
I yank the laces out of the eyelets and push the pants down. No undergarments. The move bares him to me.
And then I’m the one caught, risking my sanity, because he’s so long and thick, so hard, so sexy. Veined and obscenely large. Beautiful and powerful, like the rest of him.
My mouth starts to water. I want to taste him, feel the shape of him inside my mouth. Did he feel that way when he put his mouth on me? I want to wrench pleasure out of him, hear him moan and shout, feel him shake and crash.
I wrap a hand around the fat girth of him and he hisses.
“Rae.” His voice is broken, just from my touch. I shamelessly relish the power I seem to have over him. So what if he has the same power over me? I tighten my hold and he groans. “Fuck…”
“You asked what I want,” I whisper. “I want this. To touch you, taste you.”
“You’re killing me.”
“A good death, I hope.”
“I can’t… can’t lose control. And I will. It’s you, and it’s been way too long for me. Just…”
I remember with sudden clarity Tru speaking of Jai’s loneliness, his fear of infecting others with shadows. “What is it?”
“Phaethon could take over, and he’s… unkind. He could hurt you.”
This is news to me—that in the throes of pleasure he could accidentally unleash the Eosphor. I hesitate, but then…
I can’t stop now, and is it wrong that I want to see what Phaethon would do, if he’d pin me to the wall, take me hard, be unkind to me?
That I like both Jai’s control and gentleness with me, his wish to let me do what I want, and the idea of him losing all control and going as feral and rough as Phaethon would?
I want a man who respects me and listens to me, but in the bedroom I’d like him to sometimes take the reins.
Force pleasure into me.
Take over and make me give in, give up, stop worrying and fearing. Stop aching.
The thought stuns me a little, and I go still, listening to his ragged breathing. Phaethon… Why do I find the arrogant prick hot, too? Or is it just easier to be taken hard, avoid any gentleness, any emotion?
Then I think I’d like to see Jai go a little crazy, too.
“Rae…” He’s still trembling—his whole body tense, the muscular thigh on which my other hand has landed hard as a rock. His cock twitches in my hand with a life of its own, and a nutty, musky scent laces the air.
A pearly drop has appeared on the head of his cock. I smear it with my thumb and a strangled sound escapes him.
Interesting.
Then I move from under him onto my knees, and his cock jumps in my hand.
“Holy fuck,” he breathes, long fingers sliding over my head, digging into my hair. “This is a fantasy. It’s not real.”
Which pushes me to prove him wrong. It’s not like I’m not dying to try this with him, to explore his rugged body and find out every sensitive spot.
Starting with the hard rod of flesh trembling in my hand.
When I stick out my tongue and drag it over the underside, he swears again, a low sound, his fingers clenching in my hair. The light sting gives me the courage to explore further. I drag my tongue over his cock again and taste the new drop appearing in the tiny slit on the head.
“Fuck!” He’s panting now and his cock has somehow grown harder and larger. “Fuck, Rae.”
So I open my mouth and slide it over the flared head, let it hit the back of my throat.
“Oh, Gods, yeah. Take it deep. Good girl.” He pulls my hair, pulls my head back. I find his gaze on me, black and hot and burning. “Take it deeper. You can do it.”
I’m growing damper between my legs. Fucking soaked. Who knew dirty words would have such an effect on me?
And let’s not forget the thick, hard cock in my mouth.
Jai’s cock, specifically.
His voice in my ears.
His scent.
His warmth.
His body, his pleasure, the shattering of his self-restraint, it all belongs to me. I did this to him. He’s so affected by me.
And it makes me hot and bothered and… happy.